There was some commercial for the Commodore 64 which basically lambasted the IBM PC for being twice as expensive while having the the same 64K memory.
I was, like, "yeah, but nobody ever bought the 64K model of IBM PC. That would have been just ridiculously limited, right? Right? Everyone got memory expansions, surely?"
Well, 64K was the stock configuration, so I'm sure those memory expansions sold like hotcakes. There was even the option for freaking 16K memory. (Now, I'm sure next to nobody bought that.) Even option to getting no floppy drives, because you could always put your glorious BASIC programs on a cassette tape. Like a caveman. (This also sounds like a rare option.)
We had a PCjr. Default was 64k, but we got the 64k sidecar add on for a whopping 128 kb of RAM. We also got a Hayes Smartmodem 1200 with the aluminum case and red LEDs that I still have, because it’s amazing even though it’s useless. Dad would use it to connect to Compuserv.
We never had the Chiclet keyboard, though - I think they were on to regular keyboards by the time we bought ours.
These modern $5 microchips probably have more features people care about too. Also they go like 100MHz on 3V and like 50mA (or less) of current. Or ~150mW of power or so and are therefore suitable to be run off of AA batteries.
Fun fact: flipping the switch on the surge protector while someone was working on one of these was absolutely devastating to their work. They would remind you about the incident nearly 40 years later.
Hey, I recognize you from this comment! You flipped that switch so many decades ago, ruining everything I had worked so hard for. I’ll always remember.
Those lost 50KB of work will forever be etched into my mind. Quite literally: the second I get my hands on a 30TB neurolink you bet your goddam ass I’m making a 50KB text file with your name on repeat, so that I’ll always hear your name echo in my thoughts. “u/[email protected] flipped my surge protector’s switch”, for x in range infinity
I was quoted £450 for 16MB in 1993. Approximately double that now with inflation. I was a 15 year old with a part time paper route, no way I’d ever afford that!
It says it has a "high res monitor". For having learned to program graphics on this machine, we had to count the pixels to be able to fit our drawings in the screen: 512x342, that's not a lot of screen real estate. The 640x480 PC screen was a luxury.
And to add it was the most advanced device compared to the others. Full mouse support, graphical interface, WYSIWYG , it was a true gamechanger.
Had a used one myself and soldered RAM chips on the MB to make it a fat Mac with 4MB RAM . Boot disk system was copied to a RAM disk after boot. Good times
Not very surprising considering their inspiration from xerox parc. I bought a mouse in 86 for my dads pc - a 3 button Genius. On PC mouse would not take off until windows was launched - gui was not needed for real business use according to IBM
Yep - but it was the only one available in my area of Norway at the time (I got mine for under 500 NOK because the supplier did wrong. As I was just a kid he let it slide and I got to keep it. There was some painting software supplied as well. That guy went on to be one of Norways biggest producers of pc’s - REC computers
Apple was a very different company back then. If they had followed the philosophy they have today, Apple would have been the last company to to introduce a mouse. The idea is that if a new feature becoms industry standard, they won’t apply it until like 5 years later, but make it somehow better than anyone else.
In this context, it would have probably meant not including a keyboard or display at this point. They could have skipped the black+green stage and go straight for color displays while increasing the resolution, size and refresh rate or something.
Seriously, though, it’s no wonder why businesses had most of computers in the 80s; these companies were ripping people the hell off and getting away with it. Nearly $6 grand and you don’t even get a hard drive, nor a reasonable amount of RAM. Give me a fucking break.
Two years later you could get an Amiga 500, with 512KB for £499. They were such a deal when they arrived. I bought a 20MB hard drive, an extra 512KB of RAM, a second floppy drive and a monitor. If I recall correctly that set me back around £1400.
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